Melanie Rimmer

We're still recruiting for this study: Are you neurodivergent & have done, or considered, a PhD? We’re researching how doctoral study works (or doesn’t) for neurodivergent people. Take our 30min survey: forms.office.com/e/ft9jyWsPUW
Questions? Email lindsay.odell@open.ac.uk
#PhD #Neurodivergent

Are you neurodivergent & have done, or considered, a PhD? We’re researching how doctoral study works (or doesn’t) for neurodivergent people. Take our 30min survey & help make academia more inclusive forms.office.com/e/ft9jyWsPUW
Questions? Email lindsay.odell@open.ac.uk
#PhD #Neurodivergent

Why austerity is a political choice not an economic necessity Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward. Ch...

Welfare cuts are a political choice.

685,500 Britons (1%) have wealth of £2.8trn. 48m (70%) have £2.4trn.

Richest four have more wealth than 20m people combined.

Govt could have taxed the rich, chose to cut benefits of the disabled/poor.

Not acceptable. Tell your MP to oppose the cuts.

Improve a first line by substituting Mrs Dalloway:

“Last night I dreamed Mrs Dalloway went to Manderley again”

I keep seeing the press describe benefits cuts as a 'crackdown'. Other crackdowns we hear about usually reference crime or anti-social behaviour. What does that imply about benefit claimants?

Claiming the benefits you're entitled to isn't a crime - these are cuts, not a crackdown

Fashion, identity, and the need for community Sinéad Burke’s love of fashion has driven her to campaign for change and, ultimately, establish a consultancy that aims to transform the way the industry includes and represents Disabled people.

What we wear can be a projection of how we want to be percieved.

In my series for Wellcome Collection Stories Sinéad Burke shares why she is so passionate about the fashion and why the industry can be a transformative space for disability justice.

wellcomecollection.org/stories/fash...

Labour is gaslighting disabled people – and that should terrify us all | Zoe Williams The messaging that suggests poverty is caused by low aspiration and that disability is a choice could have come straight from the Conservatives’ playbook, writes Zoe Williams

“If you are reliant on Pip, it is truly terrifying to witness, but it should terrify all of us, because a government that can front out this kind of denial is one that is not listening, not curious, not realistic and not humane.” @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Only on purpose

Meanwhile, staff stress is skyrocketing and all the OU has done is to offer senior managers a training course and ask the rest of us if we feel better yet?

Hey folks a lot of you are sharing big blocks of text on coloured backgrounds with all sorts of big claims/news and yet providing no link to any actual source.

This is how propaganda & disinformation spreads.

Provide sources. It's absolutely critical

And alt text because almost none of you are.

There is a shameful tradition of demonising disabled people. Why is Labour reigniting it? | Frances Ryan Ministers run away from a wealth tax and then concoct a punitive benefits system. They have made that choice and it’s immoral, says Guardian columnist Frances Ryan

“Every time you see a headline on “the cost of the benefits bill”, what you are really reading is “the cost of disabled people”. 

My col. on Labour’s reported benefit cuts and the toxic narrative of the “moral” virtue of work. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Government’s employment reforms clash with its welfare plans Jobs market policies could threaten the part-time vacancies that ease people back into work

Government wants more people to return to work, but at the same time, is consciously eliminating the jobs that offer the best paths back into work:

Relevant to the 'disabled people need to work' discussions:
A contact of mine applied for a job.
They asked for one small cost-free 'reasonable adjustment'.
The employer promptly told them they couldn't have this.
No discussion.
It's Not The Disabled People Who Are The 'Problem', #Labour Party.

I was supposed to write from 7am - 9am this morning, but was on a roll so didn't stop until 9:40. Wrote 750 words.
It's part of my literature review for my PhD - writing about different models of disability (I've identified 14) and how they shape discourse

I recognise I'll never finish reading. By the time I've read everything relevant written to date, other people will have written more. People in my field are writing RIGHT NOW. Bastards. I hate them. STOP! I need to catch up!

Is this just impostor syndrome? Do I think I need to earn the right to write by reading "enough"? Is this just self-sabotage, endlessly deferring the painful task of writing by convincing myself to read as displacement activity?

thesis. So this can't be how everyone else does it, all the other academics who write things. Are they just far more well-read than I am? Or are they misrepresenting themselves, citing things they haven't read? Or am I just inventing overly stringent rules for myself that nobody follows or expects?

or misrepresent myself as having read things I haven't. But while I'm reading I feel anxiety because I'm supposed to be writing, not reading, this isn't getting any writing done. & if I have to read a whole article or book or chapter for every sentence I write, it will take me 100 years to write a

cited it. & then I think "I can't cite that if I haven't read it" & I get the feeling that I haven't read enough to authoritatively write anything. So I stop writing and start reading the article/chapter/book so that I feel I understand it properly & won't be mispresenting it in my writing, or

Writing is so anxiety-inducing. I start to write something & then I think "Where did I find that idea from?" & search for an article/book to cite. Then I realise I never read the whole article or book, I read about it in a "...for beginners" title, or I read a review of it, or something I read

I persuaded my partner, who gets up by 7 on weekdays, to bring me a coffee every morning so I can get a couple of hours writing done in bed before I start "work" work. 364 words this morning. I love this plan.

Followed you because I want to read this. It's very relevant to my own work

Oral health and learning disability: common conditions made complex - Learning Disability Today Poor oral health is more common in people with a learning disability, which can have physical, psychological and social consequences and a major impact on people’s quality of life.

Oral health and learning disability: common conditions made complex

Got up early to do some writing on my Lit Review. Endnote had a massive tantrum and needs to be reinstalled. Thinking about just going back to bed

There is an urgent need for equality and improvement of clinical care for people with a learning disability in Northern Ireland, delegates at a conference have heard.

There hasn't yet been a day that made me regret not voting Labour in the last GE. I could see that the Tories had become worse than they had ever been. But Labour also had become worse, and now occupied the space that the old Tories used to occupy. This latest move doesn't surprise me.

I'm not sure which of you need to hear this, but:

If you push yourself to your limits and burn out for a company, you are trading years of your future productivity for minor gains in the present.

Burning out will _fuck you up_, it's like brain fog or depression, and it takes years to recover

Autistic woman wrongly locked up in mental health hospital for 45 years “Kasibba”, who is non-verbal and had no family to speak for her, was one of hundreds wrongly detained.

Kasibba spent 45 wrongly locked up in a mental health hospital. Hundreds of other autistic people and people with learning disabilities are still wrongly detained. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Maybe we should coin some terms that carry the opposite connotation eg neurocommon, neurobanal, neuromundane, neurobland.